Assessment of equine locomotor biomechanics during racing using instrumented tags

Horseracing is a major UK industry and a significant UK export. Alan Wilson's research group has developed significant expertise in analysing equine locomotion and mechanics in the laboratory and during training (16 papers including two in Nature) and in studying factors limiting animal locomotion (including a further paper in Nature on greyhound racing). These studies have, however, been made largely during submaximal exercise during training. The RVC group are extremely keen to undertake measurements on animals during racing since they are going much faster (20%) and that is when many injuries occur. TurfTrax are in the unique position of having a radio tracking tag on a large number of horses during racing and this project involves the analysis of their data archive and augmentation of their tag system to make new research relevant measurements. This project is particularly exciting because it offers the opportunity to make measurements on horses while racing, to explore events that happen only in racing / for instance, 0.3% of horses suffer a fracture during a race but it is not known whether there are gait changes indicative of breakdown, whether the fracture is a one off overload or a true fatigue injury and what external factors contribute to fracture. This study could therefore have important welfare implications for injuries suffered during horseracing and could form the basis of a larger epidemiological project. This project falls into two parts: 1. Exploring the existing data archive (30,193 race starts in 2006) to examine the relationship between speed, surface properties (going) and incline to explore fundamental questions about what limits near maximal running speed in horses. Pilot analyses to date on the 2006 dataset demonstrate that we can record data at speeds 20% higher than seen in training and that there is appropriate variability in the data set to undertake further analysis. In particular the student will compare the effect of doing work on soft ground with that of doing work by galloping up hill. This will provide the student with training in basic biomechanics, population level statistical techniques and handling of large data bases. 2. In the second part of the project the student will augment the tag system with an inertial sensor logger. This will enable higher precision location data, estimation of stride parameters and examination of interactions between individuals in a race (eg drafting, front running). This part of the project will provide training in field work, instrumentation, sensor fusion (an area in which there is an existing BBSRC CASE student between the RVC lab and Forsberg Services), and signal processing. Turftrax, Forsberg and the RVC have agreed to work together on a number of research initiatives. There are a number of complementary ongoing studies that make the project particularly timely: 1 Wilson has funding as part of the £3.5 million EPSRC WINES project on human sprinting which has as a major focus developing wireless sensors for evaluating athletic function. 2 Wilson holds funding from the Horserace Betting Levy Board (HBLB) to study the effect of different going on horse biomechanics and injury. 3 The RVC has a large epidemiology group with interests in the aetiology of racing industries (funded by the HBLB). The RVC group has recently filed a patent on the possibility of using such instrumentation to monitor effort and fatigue in racing animals and we would be proactive in this project to generating and protecting IP for the benefit of both partners. This research is closely aligned with TurfTrax's interest in assessing racing 'going', how horses are ridden in racing and the epidemiology of how and when horses are injured. The RVC group have already compared the accuracy of the Turftrax system to a survey quality precision GPS and demonstrated the accuracy is superior to conventional GPS for both speed and position and appropriate for our research.